Nicholson was born in Neptune City, New Jersey,[1] the son of a showgirl, June Frances Nicholson (November 5, 1918 – July 31, 1963) (stage name June Nilson).[2][3] June had married Italian American showman Donald Furcillo (stage name Donald Rose) six months earlier in Elkton, Maryland, on October 16, 1936.[4] Furcillo was already married. Although he reportedly offered to take care of the child, June's mother Ethel insisted that she bring up the baby, partly so that June could pursue her dancing career and partly because June was only eighteen years old when she gave birth to Jack.[5] Although Furcillo claimed to be Nicholson's biological father and to have committed bigamy by marrying June, biographer Patrick McGilligan asserted in Jack's Life that Latvian-born Eddie King (originally Edgar A. Kirschfeld),[6] June's manager, may have been Nicholson's biological father. Other sources suggest June Nicholson was unsure of who the father was.[2] Nicholson's mother was of Irish, English, and Pennsylvania Dutch (German) descent.

Nicholson was brought up believing that his maternal grandparents, John Joseph Nicholson (a department store window dresser in Manasquan, New Jersey) and Ethel May (née Rhoads, a hairdresser, beautician and amateur artist in Manasquan), were his parents. Nicholson discovered that his "parents" were actually his grandparents and his "sister" was his mother only in 1974, after a journalist for TIME magazine who was doing a feature on Nicholson informed him of the fact.[7] By this time, both his mother and grandmother had died (in 1963 and 1970, respectively).

When Nicholson first came to Hollywood, he worked as a gofer for animation legends William Hanna and Joseph Barbera at the MGM cartoon studio. Seeing his talent as an artist, they offered Nicholson a starting level position as an animation artist. However, citing his desire to become an actor, he declined.[13]

He made his film debut in a low-budget teen drama The Cry Baby Killer, in 1958, playing the title role. For the following decade, Nicholson was a frequent collaborator with the film's producer, Roger Corman. Corman directed Nicholson on several occasions, most notably in The Little Shop of Horrors, as masochistic dental patient and undertaker Wilbur Force, and also in The Raven, The Terror, and The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. He worked frequently with director Monte Hellman as well on low-budget westerns, though two in particular, Ride in the Whirlwind and The Shooting, initially failed to find interest from any US film distributors but gained cult success on the art house circuit in France and were later sold to television. Nicholson also appeared in two episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, one as Marvin Jenkins, a townsman falsely accused of stealing merchandise from a local hardware store in the episode titled "Aunt Bee, the Juror". He also played Mr. Garland, a father who with his wife, left a baby on the courthouse steps in the episode entitled, "Opie and the Baby".

With his acting career heading nowhere, Nicholson seemed resigned to a career behind the camera as a writer/director. His first real taste of writing success was the screenplay for the 1967 counterculture film The Trip (directed by Corman), which starred Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. Nicholson also co-wrote, with Bob Rafelson, the movie Head, which starred The Monkees. In addition, he also arranged the movie's soundtrack. However, after a spot opened up in Fonda and Hopper's Easy Rider, it led to his first big acting break. Nicholson played hard-drinking lawyer George Hanson, for which he received his first Oscar nomination. The part of Hanson was a lucky break for Nicholson—the role had in fact been written for actor Rip Torn, who was a close friend of screen writer Terry Southern, but Torn withdrew from the project after a bitter argument with the film's director and co-star Dennis Hopper, during which the two men almost came to blows.[14] In interview, Nicholson later acknowledged the importance of being cast in Easy Rider: "All I could see in the early films, before Easy Rider, was this desperate young actor trying to vault out of the screen and create a movie career."[15] Nicholson was cast by Stanley Kubrick, who was impressed with his role in Easy Rider, in the part of Napoleon in a film about his life, and although production on the film commenced, the project fizzled out, partly due to a change in ownership at MGM and other issues.[16]

Nicholson introduced several acts at Live Aid at the JFK Stadium in July 1985. He turned down the role of John Book in Witness.[23] The 1989 Batman movie, wherein Nicholson played the psychotic murderer and villain, The Joker, was an international smash hit, and a lucrative percentage deal earned him a percentage of the box office gross estimated at $60 million to $90 million.[24] For his role as hot-headed Col. Nathan R. Jessup in A Few Good Men (1992), a movie about a murder in a U.S. Marine Corps unit, Nicholson received yet another Academy nomination.[25]

In 1996, Nicholson collaborated once more with Batman director Tim Burton on Mars Attacks!, pulling double duty as two contrasting characters, President James Dale and Las Vegas property developer Art Land. At first studio executives at Warner Bros. disliked the idea of killing off Nicholson's character, so Burton created two characters and killed them both off. Not all of Nicholson's performances have been well received. He was nominated for Razzie Awards as worst actor for Man Trouble (1992) and Hoffa (1992). However, Nicholson's performance in Hoffa also earned him a Golden Globe nomination.[26][27]

On September 4, 2013, reports spread around the internet from various sources claiming that Nicholson was retiring from acting due to memory loss, unable to remember the lines for his scripts. Hours later, an unidentified source informed NBC News that the rumors were false and that Nicholson was actively reading scripts and is looking forward to his next project.[29]

On February 15, 2015, Nicholson made a special appearance as a presenter on SNL 40, the 40th anniversary special of Saturday Night Live.

Nicholson's only marriage was to Sandra Knight from 1962 to 1968. They had one daughter together, Jennifer (born 1963). Actress Susan Anspach contends that her son, Caleb Goddard (born 1970), was fathered by Nicholson, though he is not convinced he is the father.[30][31] Between 1973 and 1990, Nicholson had an on-again, off-again relationship with actress Anjelica Huston that included periods of overlap with other women, including Danish model Winnie Hollman, by whom he fathered a daughter, Honey Hollman (born 1981). From 1989 to 1994, Nicholson had a relationship with actress Rebecca Broussard. They had two children together: daughter Lorraine (born 1990) and son Raymond (born 1992).

In a criminal lawsuit filed on February 8, 1994, Robert Blank stated that Nicholson, then 56, approached Blank's Mercedes-Benz while he was stopped at a red light in North Hollywood. After accusing the other man of cutting him off in traffic, Nicholson used a golf club to bash the roof and windshield of Blank's car. A witness confirmed Blank's account of the incident, and misdemeanor charges of assault and vandalism were filed against Nicholson. Charges were dropped after Nicholson apologized to Blank and the two reached an undisclosed settlement, which included a reported $500,000 check from Nicholson.[32]

Nicholson later expressed regret about the incident in an interview with Us Magazine, calling it "a shameful incident in my life." He explained that a close friend had recently died, and that he had also been under a good deal of stress during the shooting of his most recent movie, The Crossing Guard. According to Nicholson, he went "out of [his] mind" after being cut off and snatched one of his golf clubs from the trunk of his car. Though press reports of the incident variously reported that the club in question had been a three- or a five-iron, Nicholson (who started golfing seriously after learning the game for the filming of 1990's The Two Jakes) cleared up the issue in a 2007 interview with Golf Digest. "I was on my way to the course, and in the midst of this madness I somehow knew what I was doing," he says, "because I reached into my trunk and specifically selected a club I never used on the course: my two-iron."[33]

Nicholson in 2008

The road rage incident was not the last time Nicholson's volatile temper made news. A legendary fan of the Los Angeles Lakers professional basketball team, Nicholson has more than once been threatened with ejection from his courtside seats because he argued with or shouted at the game's referees. As BBC News reported, Nicholson was almost ejected from a Lakers playoff game against the San Antonio Spurs in May 2003 after he yelled at the game's referee[34] for calling a third foul on Lakers star Shaquille O'Neal. The incident occurred shortly after the release of his latest movie at the time, Anger Management, where he played the role of a therapist.[35]

Nicholson lived next door to Marlon Brando for a number of years on Mulholland Drive in Beverly Hills. Warren Beatty also lived nearby, earning the road the nickname "Bad Boy Drive." After Brando's death in 2004, Nicholson purchased his bungalow for $6.1 million, with the purpose of having it demolished. Nicholson stated that it was done out of respect to Brando's legacy, as it had become too expensive to renovate the "derelict" building which was plagued by mold.[36]

Nicholson's friendship with author-journalist Hunter S. Thompson is described in Thompson's autobiography Kingdom of Fear. According to Thompson, they would exchange "bizarre" presents which resulted in a perceived assassination attempt against the actor. Thompson appeared outside Nicholson's home on the night of Nicholson's birthday, having set off a high-powered spotlight and gunfire, playing a tape of animal cries through an amplifier to awaken him. Thompson then left a freshly cut-out elk's heart on Nicholson's door as a joke before leaving when it appeared that nobody would exit the house.[37] Following the death of Thompson in 2005, Nicholson and fellow actors Johnny Depp, John Cusack, and Sean Penn attended the private memorial service in Colorado.[38]

Nicholson was also a close friend of Robert Evans, the producer of Chinatown, and after Evans lost Woodland, his home, as the result of a 1980s drug bust, Nicholson and other friends of the producer purchased Woodland to give it back to Evans.[39][40]

Nicholson is a fan of the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Lakers. He has been a Laker season ticket holder since 1970 and has held courtside season tickets for the past 25 years next to the opponent's benches at both The Forum and the Staples Center, missing very few games. In a few instances, Nicholson has engaged in arguments with game officials and opposing players, and even walked onto the court.[41] Studios were rumored to schedule filming around the Lakers home schedule[41][42] although he disputed this claim in an interview with BBC radio in 2008.[43]

In 2011, Nicholson received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Brown University at its two hundred and forty-third commencement. At the ceremony, Ruth Simmons, Brown University's president, called him, "the most skilled actor of our lifetime".[50]

With 12 Academy Award nominations (eight for Best Actor and four for Best Supporting Actor), Nicholson is the most nominated male actor in Academy Awards history. Only Nicholson, Michael Caine, and Laurence Olivier (1930s–1970s) have been nominated for an acting (lead or supporting) Academy Award in five decades: the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and the 2000s. Paul Newman also: 1950s, 1960s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000's

At the 79th Academy Awards, Nicholson had fully shaved his head for his role in The Bucket List. In 2013, Nicholson co-presented the Academy Award for Best Picture with first lady Michelle Obama. This ceremony marked the eighth time he has presented the Academy Award for Best Picture (1972, 1977, 1978, 1990, 1993, 2006, 2007, and 2013). Nicholson is an active and voting member of the Academy.

^McDougal, Dennis (October 2007). Five Easy Decades: How Jack Nicholson Became the Biggest Movie Star in Modern Times. Wiley. p. 16. ISBN0-471-72246-4. "When Jack was ready for high school, the family moved once more-this time two miles (3 km) farther south to old-money Spring Lake, Jersey's so called Irish Riviera, where Ethel May set up her beauty parlor in a rambling duplex at 505 Mercer Avenue."